Chapter 972: The King of the Tang Dynasty enters Jingzhou
Zhang Yue was not worried about the situation in Jingzhou and Anlu Prefecture, so he quickly sent people to Mianyang Prefecture in Anlu Prefecture to tell Fei Qinxiang to guard against it and never let the puppet Tang rebels take advantage of the loophole, no matter it was
Anlu Prefecture or Jingzhou Prefecture, there is no room for error!
But it took two days for the envoy he just sent. It is estimated that the envoy has not arrived at Fei Qinxiang's side. He received another urgent letter from Fei Qinxiang, saying that their reconnaissance cavalry was on the edge of the Yangtze River in Jianli, Anlu Prefecture.
, discovered a large fleet of puppet Tang rebels heading up the river.
When Zhang Yue saw this letter, five days had actually passed since their scouts discovered the fleet of puppet Tang rebels sailing up the river!
This is the reality caused by backward communication.
Even though there are many messengers galloping on fast horses, there is still a huge lag in the transmission of the message!
Anlu Prefecture is not far from Hanyang, but the reconnaissance cavalry discovered that the fleet of the Puppet Tang Bandit Army was heading up the Yangtze River. They had to report the news to their superiors first, who would then report it to Fei Qinxiang, and then Fei Emotionally dispatched
Send people to Zhang Yue.
It was actually not easy to get the news to Zhang Yue in five days.
When Zhang Yue saw this letter, he felt a little tight in his chest for a moment!
The fleet of the Puppet Tang Dynasty rebels is heading west along the Yangtze River. Where are they going? Even a fool can see that they are going to Jingzhou, and the Puppet Tang Dynasty army that the fleet is carrying is probably the Puppet Tang Dynasty army.
2nd Infantry Division.
The previous speculation is now really about to become a reality. The puppet Tang rebel army spent a lot of money and actually sent the Second Infantry Division to Jingzhou instead of transferring it to Anluzhou or Hanyang.
What are they going to do?
They want to capture Jingzhou, but what do they do by capturing Jingzhou?
Jingzhou, the geographical location of this city is naturally very important. It is an important town in the west of Huguang and an important front station for marching into Sichuan. Well, it is also an important bridgehead to prevent the enemy from invading the hinterland of Huguang from Sichuan.
But what was the purpose of the bandit army in capturing Jingzhou?
Entering Sichuan?
Impossible, I am still in Hanyang, and there are at least 100,000 supervisors in Huguang. Even if the puppet Tang rebel army really wants to march into Sichuan, they have to kill these 100,000 main forces first.
Enter Sichuan.
In order to block Sichuan's governor, do you want to go out to Sichuan to reinforce yourself?
This is very possible!
Zhang Yue thought of many possibilities, but he never thought that in fact, the Tang Army's move was to prevent him from escaping into Sichuan with his 100,000-strong main force!
Why didn’t Zhang Yue think of this possibility?
Because he has never considered escaping into Sichuan with a hundred thousand troops. It's not that he doesn't want to, but that he can't!
To be more precise, it is impossible for these 100,000 supervisors to follow him and escape into Sichuan!
As the commander-in-chief of the governors, he knows very well what the governors under his command are like, what their strengths and weaknesses are.
The advantage is that in order to defend Hubei and defend their hometown, they will fight to the death. Well, I am mainly talking about the generals who supervise the standard, because they do not want to see that they, like the gentry in the Jiangnan area, will be forced to pay numerous taxes in the future!
As the gentry of the Ming Dynasty, they never paid taxes. They didn’t pay taxes before, they don’t pay taxes now, and they don’t want to pay taxes in the future!
As for ordinary soldiers, we won’t discuss this anymore. They are just soldiers eating food!
You asked the generals who were born as local gentry in Huguang to lead their troops into Sichuan to fight for Zhang Yue and King Jing? It is nonsense to abandon their hometown to the puppet Tang Dynasty!
How is this possible? They spent money and effort to resist the puppet Tang Dynasty, not for Zhang Yue, let alone for King Jing, they did it for themselves!
If Zhang Yue wanted to take them into Sichuan, they might as well simply surrender to the puppet Tang rebels!
Therefore, Zhang Yue never said that he planned to bring these 100,000 Huguang governor's bids to Sichuan!
Of course, if things really come to an irreversible point, he himself may enter Sichuan. After all, there is another army of his in Sichuan, the Dubiao Hou Army. It is the Dubiao Hou Army formed with the core of the local gentry children in Sichuan
, and Huguang Supervision are two different things.
But he will not leave before the whole army is defeated!
Zhang Yue has no intention of bringing the Huguang governor to Sichuan, so naturally he will not think about it!
To be honest, Li Xuan and many generals of the Tang Army were worried about Zhang Yue leading 100,000 Huguang governors into Sichuan. This was superfluous!
But what should I say? Li Xuan is not Zhang Yue, and the Royal Master of the Tang Dynasty is not Supervisor. The difference between the two is too great. From a purely military perspective, the choice of the Royal Master of the Tang Dynasty is correct.
So they chose to attack Jingzhou, preparing to completely block the 100,000 governors in Huguang, and then gather together to annihilate them!
Zhang Yue was confused for a while about the deeper meaning of the Puppet Tang Dynasty bandit army's capture of Jingzhou, but this did not mean that he would sit back and watch the Puppet Tang Dynasty bandit army capture Jingzhou. In any case, Jingzhou was an important town in the west of Huguang.
He immediately sent someone to send a message to Fei Qinxiang, telling him to defend Jingzhou!
In fact, there was no need for Zhang Yue to send someone to issue this order. Fei Qinxiang, the commander-in-chief of Supervisory Biao Right Army, had already done so!
He didn't think as much as Zhang Yue. He just thought that Jingzhou was the area he wanted to defend, and the rebel army seemed to have at least ten thousand people, so the seven thousand people in Jingzhou might not be safe, so he immediately sent
People went to mobilize troops from Jingmen and Dangyang to reinforce Jingzhou. Although these two places are in the rear area, they each have more than a thousand troops garrisoned, and the total strength is 3,000.
In addition, he personally led the troops left behind in Qianjiang and dispatched 3,000 people to quickly reinforce Jingzhou.
He personally led 6,000 men to reinforce Jingzhou. Adding in the 7,000 defenders of Jingzhou, there were 13,000 men. They should be able to defend it, right?
Fei Qinxiang thought so and did the same thing. Only in Mianyang Prefecture, there were only 5,000 people in the third mixed group of the rebel army. It was almost enough to leave 5,000 people for defense.
When Fei Qinxiang rushed to reinforce Jingzhou, the Second Infantry Division of the Tang Dynasty Army that caused all this also arrived at the edge of the Yangtze River outside Jingzhou City!
After a long journey, they arrived outside Jingzhou City and landed!
There is nothing to say about the landing. The Tang Navy had an absolute advantage and easily crushed the resistance of some local Ming naval forces, and then covered the ships carrying many soldiers and equipment of the army and directly landed on the beach!
Dozens of river warships were lined up on the riverside, and hundreds of naval guns fired several rounds at the shore. After a few rounds of covering fire, a group of about a thousand people who didn't know whether to say it was reckless or daring were fired.
The Ming army was beaten and fled in embarrassment!
Standing on the bow of the ship, watching the Ming army fleeing in panic hundreds of meters away, the commander of the Second Infantry Division, Major General Song Tianbiao, was speechless.
To be honest, this was the first time he had seen such a stupid supervisor!
Didn't you see that when your own fleet landed, the dense rows of naval warships behind them had their muzzles exposed?
Without the naval gun cover, he would not have been so blatant and landed directly one kilometer away from the urban area of Jingzhou!
The result was good, before they could rush over, several covering volleys from the navy drove them away!
To be honest, because the distance is too far, the navy's naval guns did not achieve many effective hits. At most, the opponent only killed or injured a hundred people. However, the casualties of just a hundred people were enough to make the thousands of people on the opposite side understand.
The army collapsed.
A thousand-man army suffered hundreds of casualties, with a casualty rate of more than 10%. This casualty rate was not too small even for his Second Infantry Division. It would not be a direct collapse, but it would definitely reduce its combat effectiveness.
Big discount!
Seeing that the other side had been pushed to more than 500 meters away, and had no intention of coming forward again, Army Major General Song Tianbiao turned around and said to a naval colonel: "Thanks to the navy's assistance along the way!"
This rear admiral is Zhang Chenhui, commander of the Xiangjiang Squadron of the Yangtze River Fleet. Although his military rank is not low, even within the navy, he is just an ordinary senior general. His military rank is earned through hard work. Otherwise, he should be
He is the commander of a squadron in the ocean fleet, not the commander of a squadron in the river fleet.
Speaking of fame, he is definitely far inferior to Song Tianbiao, who is also a major general in front of him!
So he spoke quite politely: "There, there, covering the army's advance and landing, that is what our navy should do, and it is also thanks to your army along the way that we have been able to eat well for half a month!"
Song Tianbiao said: "It's just a few tons of supplies, it's nothing. This is also a little care of our army!"
In order to make the naval forces of the Xiangjiang Squadron be more attentive during the cover process, Song Tianbiao also spent a lot of money before setting off, and directly transferred a batch of high-quality supplies from the supplies to these navy thugs, otherwise
, if they were not careful while escorting and their troop transport ship sank, it would result in dozens or even hundreds of casualties.
Quan thought they were spending money to buy safety. No, after throwing out a few tons of food supplies, Zhang Chenhui and the others were more attentive along the way. They were also extremely attentive when they covered the landing of their own troops. Not to mention anything else, just
The few rounds of naval gun salvos just now were worth the price of those food supplies, not to mention that they would need to continue to provide their own naval gun fire support in the future!
The cost of ammunition alone for the naval guns to provide cover is more than the price of those food supplies!
In this transaction, Song Tianbiao boasted that he did not make a loss, but on the contrary, he made a small profit!
Although there are many good things in those supplies that everyone in the army is jealous of, such as Erjiu brand canned fish, and canned meat produced by the military grain company directly under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, Song Tianbiao believes that eating
Everything is the same. You can still fight if you eat ordinary rice. It doesn't mean that you will have higher combat effectiveness if you eat canned fish or canned meat.
After they captured Jingzhou, they would directly collect food on the spot, kill pigs and sheep, and get some fresh fruits and vegetables. It would be much better than eating dry food or broken cans!